Today we give you a recap of some favorite scenes from the festival across many cities of Finland thanks to the vision and organizing of Jorgos Fanaris and his team who collectively direct the festival from their headquarters in a post-industrial neighborhood of Helsinki. While there is a proud graff scene and history here, and the city has areas like the Pasila Street Art District, the capital is usually known as a sparkling international city of islands and a peninsula by the Gulf of Finland facing Tallinn, Estonia across the bay.

Proudly humble, elegant and rationally romantic, the city is flanked on all sides by arts and culture, low and high, with historical art institutions like the National Museum as well as the more contemporary Kiasma and cross disciplinary Kunsthalle Helsinki. A deeper rooted cultural history is also apparent in the traditional wooden architecture, the influence of its neighbors Sweden and Russia, and its ability even today to evolve with the most modern of global design practice.

For urban explorers like ourselves who wander the margins and explore the forgotten, neglected parts of the metropolis, it was a bit of a shock to see 8 charming Finnish cities and towns in only a few days – interspersed with millions of birch tree forests and sweeping vistas of farmland, with Russia visible at one point just across a canal.

We drove from uncongested towns surrounded by woodlands like Joensuu and Hyvinkää to midsized cities like Tampere and Espoo, using a stick shift Volkswagen and minding the speed cameras on a smooth and well maintained system of roads and highways. Usually we’re looking out for rats and broken glass and homeless drug users, not slow-moving farming tractors and wily-eyed moose who may cross your path.

But the murals! Choosing from among some of the most accomplished painters and planners of design in the current international scene, Fanaris relies on his own history with graffiti, hip hop, and perhaps the Finnish National Opera when selecting participants to invite.

The quality is high in many instances throughout the mural program and municipalities are gifted with some works may prove timeless – until they fade. Perhaps more decorative than transgressive as a whole, these are public works made in collaboration with local tastes. Some meanings are buried beneath layers, others more obvious and on the surface. An unrealized irony of many “legit” mural programs like this one is many of these artists used to do the illegal stuff too.

As UPEART travels and evolves it will be interesting to see how it changes. Fanaris tells us that the future will include installations, sculpture, even performance as the festival becomes more integrated with communities. With a solid foundation of curation on a massive country-wide scale in these first three years, we look forward to see where UPEART moves next.

“When I was a child I was not curious about painting,” Mantra says, “I was more curious about what I could find in the garden so that’s why I spent a lot of time studying these insects and these animals.” Later he shows us images of butterflies and other winged creatures rendered in high fidelity inside decaying factory rooms, including a large dead bird lying on its side. “I painted this because I had seen a dead bird in the garden only a week before.”

“I think my work is changing recently,” he says. “I have liked to do plainer paintings – like small landscapes . I’m not really into the characters that much in the same way that I was. When I do paint characters they are in the shadow. I like the idea of making portraits where the portrait is not the most important part of the painting.”

BSA: That’s so anti-intuitive – because normally that would be the center focal point, right?

Sainer: Yes – even here the portrait is central but I am trying to play all around it just to hide it. It’s just one of the ideas that I am trying to work with these days.

“Reading the real book in the age of technology and internet may look rare and a kind of old fashioned, but not for me,” he says. “This mural ‘Spirit of Antique Book’ I dedicated to all book lovers. It represents the wonderful way to escape from ordinary life to extraordinary worlds, and depicts that magic moment when you read the book and lose yourself between the pages.”

BSA: Does it concern you that school children today are becoming unfamiliar with reading traditional books on paper?

Waone: Hmm I didn’t think about books in schools, in Ukraine we still use “normal” books… But I’m sure normal books will become more and more rare. I don’t judge it and I’m not saying that’s good or bad. I just love the book esthetic, a strong symbol of knowledge.”

BSA is excited to bringing you new works from Finland next week as we explore Helsinki and nearby cities that are part of the UPEA 2018 Festival. A unique model of mural festival that invites international and local artists to paint across the entire country, UPEART has quietly entered the global Street Art and graffiti stage without entering the fray: providing top caliber artists with uncommon opportunities to create works in cities for a handful of years now.

Culture Vultures, yo. Those folks and corporations and brands who don’t originate, but they sure know how to take. They’ve been around for millenia, but are always a surprise anyway. This week the graffiti comedian Klops leads the way on Images of the Week. He’s always cracking us up with his social/political commentary – like Mother Mary and others at the foot of the cross taking a selfie with Jesus, or his bubble tagged slogans like “Yuck. Poor People,” “USA, Why You Always Lyin’?” and “War Money War Problems.” This week his culture vultures took us by surprise. Recognize anyone?

Finland joined the mural festival fray with some astounding and complex murals for UPEA this autumn. Created simultaneously in different cities, the festival soars with a large scale and with big international talents.

Wisely, they included Finnish artists who are prominent on the local Street Art scene as well and carefully curated the murals to have longevity.

For being their first edition, UPEA16 already claims that it is the biggest street art event in Finland. Of course, they mean “mural event” as true Street Art does not seek permission and is not commissioned, rather it is done illegally. But we know what they meant.

It’s the annual peregrination from Brooklyn to Miami after the Thanksgiving holiday to see the sand, the surf, the aerosol masterpieces. For readers who have witnessed the growing spectacle of the Street Art scene in this city and are worried about the full-scale absorption of Street Art and graffiti culture into the larger Urban Contemporary Art rubric, this place is a tidal wave of evidence that the sub-culture/counter-culture is simply loved and adored by too many people.

Of course, tastes vary and not everyone is into the same aesthetic, message, style, technique, and there are still plenty of ruffians trying to stir sh*t up, thank God. But it’s probably psychologically healthy for artists and fans from the origins of this scene on the street to take some pride in the fact that this grassroots arts movement is producing some of the most compelling shows, exhibitions, and events – many rivaling what is happening inside the ART BASEL fair that all these events are associated with.

All week starting this Monday we’ll be there on the ground hustling from the formal to the informal, sponsored to the D.I.Y. – to at least capture some of that energy and insight to bring to you. In partnership with UN – the Urban Nation Museum of Urban Contemporary Art in Berlin, BSA will bring you action and excitement on the streets – here are some highlight to help you with your planning:

WYNWOOD WALLS MIAMI ART WEEK

An ongoing festival of murals begun in the late 2000s, Wynwood Walls’ theme for this year is “Fear Less” and the 12 new murals will for the double meaning of the expression. From the words of Jessica Goldman Srebnick, CEO of Goldman Properties, who are folks behind Wynwood Walls:

“Every year we choose a unifying theme and ask our artists to somehow address this in their work with the goal of pushing the narrative. This year, with everything going on in the world I felt it appropriate to advocate a message of courage, in the hopes that we can all embody courage in our everyday lives. Street artists by vocation are some of the most fearless people I’ve met — and here in Wynwood, we’ve grown from a marginal area that many feared to explore – into one of the most desirable art-filled locations in the world. My father (Tony Goldman) always said, ‘Don’t give in to fear,’ and this year we’re honoring that sentiment.”

Fear Less will showcase the work of a varied mix of outstanding artists – some household names in the street art world, others up and coming. In addition to Hiratsuka, artists include AVAF (Brazil), Beau Stanton (CA, USA), Case (Germany) Dasic Fernandez (Chile) David Choe (CA, USA), Faith47 (South Africa), Felipe Pantone (Spain), Findac (UK) , Okuda (Spain), Pixel Pancho (Italy,) Risk (CA, USA), Tatiana Suarez (FL, USA) . Artist Audrey Kawasak (USA) will be painting a mural at Goldman Properties’ The Hotel on South Beach. In addition to the murals artist Ken Hiratsuka will carve boulders in the style of his intricate carvings he did on the NYC streets during the 1980’s.

Artist Talk: Thursday December 1st. 6:30 PM at the Goldman Global Arts Gallery at Wynwood Walls. A panel discussion moderated by our own Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief Steven P. Harrington with participating artists: Martha Cooper, Faith 47, Crash, Tristan Eaton and Pixel Pancho. This event is free and open to the public.

Goldman Global Arts Gallery Exhibition:

Featuring original works by the artists of the Wynwood Walls. Open Thursday December 1st, 2016 thru December 4th 2016 from 10AM-10PM and then 11AM-8PM thru February 2017, when the exhibit ends.

Wynwood Walls, Open to the Public during Art Basel Miami Art Week, Wynwood Walls is free and open to the public daily from 10 AM to Midnight.

Wynwood Walls is located at 2520 NW 2nd Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets.

MANA URBAN ART PROJECTS X JUXTAPOZ MAGAZINE

This is an epic intersection that you’ve been waiting for – hi brow/low brow, East Coast raw with West Coast surreally pop, old skool graff with hyperreal, graphic, optic and pop-gold muralistas .

All of these people in bed together is going to make a lot of sweet love people – and babies, and possibly some communicable diseases. Can you imagine the mass of the swarming of creative bodies from Juxtapoz, Thinkspace, 1XRun, Mana Contemporary, Bushwick Collective, Jonathan Levine, and many unannounced guests? It’s a first date for many of these awkward actors but we are not missing this gorgeous clusterduck!

Juxtapoz bookstore 1xRun

MILK presents Scott Campbell: WHOLE GLORY.

Juxtapoz Clubhouse: 537 NW 24th Street Entrance

Along with Milk Studios , Juxtapoz is teaming up for this special two-day tattoo exhibition/interactive art installation/tattoo emporium. “Lucky recipients will be selected via a lottery on an hourly basis”

6 – 9 p.m. at The Dog (1306 North Miami Avenue)Heliotrope Prints are $50 limited-edition fine art prints with 100% of proceeds benefitting the Heliotrope Foundation, a 501(c)(3) founded by Swoon in order to streamline her three art-based community building initiatives in Haiti, New Orleans, and the Rust Belt town of Braddock, Pennsylvania.Learn more: www.heliotropefoundation.org

ABOUT THE HOST VENUE:Curated by Christopher “Jillionaire” Leacock of Major Lazer, The Dog is a weeklong popup in Downtown Miami that will bring together a group of friends—comprised of acclaimed musicians and artists—to form a hub for inspired expression across the creative disciplines. The Dog is bar, dancehall, and art gallery rolled into one; a site-specific and immersive experience that bridges the gap between contemporary art, culture, and music. www.molly.nyc/thedog

The Millerntor Gallery is a social business by and for Viva con Agua de Sankt Pauli. Our mantra is ”art creates water” – we use art as a universal language to inspire people and involve them in collective creative engagement. Revenues from art sales and donations are being transformed into clean water. The Millerntor Gallery came to life in 2011 as an art festival inside the stadium of the legendary football club FC Sankt Pauli. Growing rapidly it has already become a global cultural movement that blends individual creative energies into one collective force to change the world for the better. More than 1000 artists have contributed their talents, crafts and works for countless Millerntor Gallery art projects in many different countries.

Seriously, like Coachella is NOT even like in Coachella. It’s like in Indio. True story.

The annual concert festival that brings legions of middle class to somewhat affluent feathered fringed bikini babes and awesome face-painted dudes dropping acid while texting and buying merch? – and which apparently features big-name indie music at some point over two weekends in April? That’s not here. That town is called Indio.

Here in Coachella, the “City of Eternal Sunshine,” no one shoots YouTube videos about “How to Survive Coachella” with hints about SPF 55 sunscreen sticks and personal sized hand sanitizer. Here you will find a mostly rural, agricultural, family oriented community which struggles with poverty regularly. They also pick a lot of your food.

That’s why Armando Lerma and Carlos Ramirez, artistically joined as The Date Farmers, began an “arts-driven community revitalization project” on March 31st, recognized in California as Cesar Chavez Day.

Inviting solidly remarkable street art and mural-painting talents to show some camaraderie with the working men and women in this community, the first annual Coachella Walls has now made its mark in the Historic Pueblo Viejo District of downtown. Here also is the recently opened Date Farmers Art Studios, which they hope will serve as the city’s first art gallery and artist residency.

According to the organizers, “Despite supplying the region with close to half a million dollars a year in vegetable crops, many of the farm workers in the Eastern Coachella Valley continue to live in unsafe and unhealthy conditions.” With murals, luck and a whole burlap sack of talent like this, Coachella Walls aims to bring awareness to these issues and others related to the life of the worker here.

Medvin Sobio was contacted by the Date Farmers to help produce and curate the public art project, and he shows us some of the images that came out of this very first annual event. Coachella Walls is funded by the city of Coachella’s public arts fund and is curated by Sobio, the director of The Academy of Street Art in Los Angeles. Our thanks to Medvin and the Date Farmers for sharing these images with us.

Says El Mac about this painting on his blog, “It’s not intended to represent any one specific person, but rather many people, especially the “anonymous farm worker”. Farm workers in this country have been marginalized despite producing the very food we all need for survival. The Coachella valley is an important region for farming, and has been the setting for many of the struggles by the UFW to to improve workers’ rights since the 60s..and you can feel this history there.”

Urban Legends Auction (LA)

Friday night >> URBAN LEGENDS: Celebrating 45 Years of Public Art Around the World is an art exhibition and an auction taking place at the LA Mart and Design Center. Works consist of large scale murals; collages; rare, limited edition photographs; and more.

Group GRAFF at Dorian Gray (NY)

Stop by the Dorian Gray Gallery in Manhattan for a reception for their group exhibition of artists spanning 30 years of art in public spaces. Featured works include such iconic New York names as Keith Haring, LA 2, Futura, Richard Hambleton, COPE 2, & CRASH. International artists such as Bansky and DOLK are paired with some newer names XAM, SeeOne, Penn & AVone.

Katowice Street Art Festival (VIDEO)

“HYPNOGOGIA” – ROA (VIDEO)

ROA’s new show “Hypnagogia” is currently on view at the StolenSpace Gallery in London.

Below is a video that shows the artist at work:

“Obey The Giant” Movie Kickstarter

“Obey The Giant” coming soon to a theater near you?…Yes if you help the auteurs, by donating to their kickstarter campaign. But before you go and donate take a moment to see the trailer for the yet to be completed film.

From the creators Julian Marshall and Alex Jablonski:

“Based on the true story of Shepard Fairey’s first act of street art, OBEY THE GIANT tells the story of a young skate punk challenging a big-city mayor and the powers-that-be at art school. Frustrated by his inability to gain respect within the confines of art school Shepard sets out to gain notoriety and acclaim by targeting the most powerful man in Providence, former Mayor Buddy Cianci. Risking expulsion and jail time Shepard plasters Andre the Giant’s face over the image of Cianci on a campaign billboard. As word of Shepard’s prank gets out, Shepard learns that art is a weapon and attention is both a blessing and a curse”.

Click here to donate on their Kickstarter and to see the trailer for the movie.

LA ART Machine
The L.A. ART MACHINE is proud to present VOX HUMANA, a large-scale, live art installation by celebrated international artists Edward Walton Wilcox, Andrew Hem, Shark Toof,and Chor Boogie at the 2011 L.A. Art Show, January 19-23, 2011. Taking place over five days and covering more than 500 square feet of canvas, this unique art happening invites visitors into the esoteric world of the artistic creative process. You are cordially invited to join us for this special art happening.